The United Nations Association Film Festival returns to the Bay Area with another urgent, globally expansive lineup. Running from October 16–26, the 28th edition of UNAFF brings 60 documentary films to venues across Palo Alto, East Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Stanford University. More than just a film festival, UNAFF is a civic forum—a space for dialogue, reflection, and action.
By Noma Faingold (April 16, 2025)
Watching the 28-minute, 10-screen film/art installation, “Lessons of the Hour,” by British artist/filmmaker Sir Isaac Julien, isn’t as overwhelming as one might think. In fact, the flood of images, sounds and words, dedicated to the life of writer, orator, philosopher, and social justice activist Fredrick Douglass (1818-1895), a former slave, allows the viewer to absorb and interpret the immersive experience in their own way.
By Gerald Peary
(Nov. 10, 2024)
A seven-part podcast, The Rabbis Go South, produced and hosted by Amy Geller and me, has launched! It tells the story of 16 Reform rabbis answering the call of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1964 to help desegregate St. Augustine, Florida. The rabbis were arrested and jailed, the largest incarceration to that time of rabbis in American history. A very compelling story. But like most of you, we’d never heard about this incident before we began. 
By C.J. Hirschfield
(November 2, 2023)
At a recent San Francisco gathering Bobi Wine (Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu) said he would like you to know that the United States gives $1 billion a year to support Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni’s 30+ year ruthless and dictatorial rule.
Ugandan opposition leader, former member of parliament, activist, and national megastar musician Wine would very much like for you to “stop paying for our oppression.”
By C.J. Hirschfield
October 8, 2022
For a documentary to even-handedly and adroitly cover a complex, painful and controversial subject in just 52 minutes requires not only talent, but a clarity of vision, and cinematic compassion.
Award-winning Bay Area filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman have accomplished just that in their timely Town Destroyer, with its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival Saturday, October 8.
Continue reading
By C.J. Hirschfield October 8, 2022
Xavier. Amin. Andrew. Blood Sugar X. Oakland’s Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter, born Xavier Dphrepaulezz and now known as Fantastic Negrito has had many names, and even more lives. The new documentary Fantastic Negrito: Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?, which has its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, traces his remarkable and unlikely journey, telling the story in chronological order, interspersed with song tracks and jam sessions that feature his unique blues/R&B/roots music. It all comes together beautifully. Continue reading
By C.J. Hirschfield
Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
In Oakland, a remarkable woman warrior for social justice has worked hard–and successfully– to bend that arc over a ten-year period, and a new documentary reminds us just how powerful one passionate person can be.
By C.J. Hirschfield
April 21, 2022 (updated April 23)
Just as the Academy Award-nominated feature documentary ATTICA effectively used historical footage and interviews with key participants to illustrate our country’s history of systemic racism, so too does the excellent new documentary AMERICAN JUSTICE ON TRIAL. 
By C.J. Hirschfield
(Updated October 22, 2022)
There is a serious discussion that takes place in the superb new documentary Bad Axe about whether the film is or is not a love letter to the eponymous town—or will its coverage of some of the town’s less savory Trumpian residents cause people to hate it? Not to worry, Bad Axe. Any town that can boast having raised a family like the one featured in the film has got to have a whole lot going for it.
By Ben Terrall
After a two-year Corona Time hiatus, the Noir City film festival will return to the Bay Area from Thursday, March 24 to Sunday, March 27 at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland. This year’s lineup, themed “They Tried to Warn Us!,” features twelve mid-twentieth century Hollywood movies that address social problems which are still all too present today.
By C.J. Hirschfield
March 14, 2022
Cinema junkies forgive iconic documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman for the length of some of his works that venture deep into American institutions; his most recent City Hall covering the government of Boston clocked in at four and a half hours. We absolve him because he is so good at taking us inside worlds that we don’t know, as his camera disappears and we learn so much by listening and observing, happy to have made the journey.
Comparisons to Wiseman’s work are inevitable as we describe the numerous joys of Maria Speth’s new documentary, Mr. Bachmann and his Class, the closing night film at Berlin & Beyond 2022, at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive. It is now streaming on MUBI. Continue reading
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